


Movin' Right Along

by keitaiijima



Category: Battle Royale - All Media Types, Battle Royale - Takami Koushun
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28075350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keitaiijima/pseuds/keitaiijima
Summary: Tadakatsu announces to Yuka that his family will be moving away and the two of them will no longer be neighbours. When going through his old things, they come across several old memories.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 3





	Movin' Right Along

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jolimelon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolimelon/gifts).



> These are two characters I hardly ever write, at least not as a main focus, so it's a nice little challenge for myself. I do really like both of them and I find the inclusion of their friendship in Angel's Border really interesting, so I was happy to be asked to write some of them. I hope you like it!

_Moving?_  
At first, Yuka had thought it was a bad attempt at a joke. Though she knew deep down, this was unlikely; Tadakatsu wasn’t much of a jokster. Then again, that’s why all his attempts at jokes were _bad ones,_ which this hopefully was just another example of. _  
_ But the boy standing in front of her had looked as serious as ever when he told her the news. They were meeting in their respective gardens, standing on different sides of the small fence separating the two properties. The chilly weather of the early spring evening was making Yuka shiver slightly.  
  
Tadakatsu was looking at her, quietly awaiting… _Any_ kind of reaction. After a silence that seemed to last for way longer than any silence previously shared between them, Yuka did the only thing she knew how. She laughed.  
“You’re not moving!” she insisted. It sounded a lot like an order. “There’s no way!”  
Tadakatsu sighed, glancing down at the ground. After all these years, Yuka knew exactly how to read every expression on his face, and she could easily tell how uncomfortable this conversation was making him. Still, as serious as it was, it just wouldn’t sink it. She refused to accept this so easily.  
Yuka waved a hand in front of her face.  
“This is why _I_ tell the jokes in this friendship,” she continued, still smiling brightly. “Nice try though, buddy!”  
She reached an arm over the fence, giving Tadakatsu’s shoulder two simple pats. One pat was for his effort, another one to console him that he merely had a poor sense of humour.

Frowning, Tadakatsu lightly shook his shoulder to remove her hand. He was growing visibly annoyed.  
“This is why I waited so long to tell you. I knew you’d react all… weird,” he complained.  
Yuka was about to make another joke, but his words repeated themselves inside her head, stopping her. _Waited so long to tell you_ …  
“Wait…” she said, her smile faltering. “Hoold on a second. If you waited a _long_ time to tell me then… When are you moving?”  
Tadakatsu’s eyes finally met hers. She was holding her breath while she waited for him to tell it to her straight, like he always did. That was one of the best things about Tadakatsu; how straightforward and uncomplicated he was.  
“At the end of this month,” he replied simply, thought with a sad edge to his voice that she rarely heard. “Sorry, Yuka.”  
Yuka stared back at him, forgetting that she was supposed to exhale. The end of the month was just a little over two weeks from now.

* * *

It was odd thinking Tadakatsu would no longer live next door to her. They had been neighbours their whole lives; she was only a couple of months older than him, and could naturally not remember any of the time before he was born. When they were old enough to run around and play, they had ran all over the neighbourhood together. Even before they knew how to do _that_ , they had sat on the grass and waved excitedly to the other across the garden.  
Yuka very rarely dwelled with feeling down, but this was really getting to her. Still, she knew there was no point in making it worse by shutting herself down and keep denying the fact of the matter. So when Tadakatsu had suggested she could come over a few days later to help out with the packing, she had quickly agreed. She figured maybe it could work as some kind of therapy, to help with closure.  
She caught herself in being a tad overdramatic and laughed quietly. _Jeez, a bit over the top… It’s not like he’s dying!_  
  


Tadakatsu was waiting for her out by his garage, giving her a short nod as a greeting.  
“You’re still here? I was hoping to greet some new, hot neighbour guy. What a bummer!” Yuka joked, figuring she would jump right into their usual banter. Tadakatsu huffed.  
“Ha ha, very funny,” he commented dryly. “The buyers are a really old couple, by the way. Don’t think that 80-year-old guy is your type.”  
Snapping her fingers, Yuka let out a quiet “Aw, man,” pretending to be very disappointed by these news.

Tadakatsu let her into the garage, and she scrunched her nose at the smell of mold and gasoline. She hoped the old couple moving in didn’t have very sensitive noses. The Hatagami garage had been used for storage of all kinds of stuff for decades, and it was beginning to show.  
“Did you take me here to kill me? Like, you’ll cut me up and eat me and keep me with you forever-“  
“You watch too many horror movies,” Tadakatsu cut her off. “You’re only here to give me some actual, practical help. No more jokes. Remember, three strikes and you’re out.”  
Yuka rolled her eyes. He really was too dry. Of course he would use a saying related to baseball, too. What a nerd. It was a miracle they had managed to be friends for this long.  
“You love my jokes. I know that’s the real reason you asked me over,” she teased, following him into the left corner of the garage, where she could already tell some of his old stuff was being stored.

Yuka immediately recognized a bright blue bike, taking up more space than it probably deserved at this point.  
“Your first bike! You still have this? It’s been too small for at least ten years!” she gasped, genuinely surprised to see it still around. Tadakatsu was not the type to be sentimental enough to keep a lot of memories around. She had been surprised he even had more to pack than just a bag worth of clothes.  
“You know my dad keeps everything,” he shrugged in response, glancing at the bike. “There’s probably a couple of more laying around here somewhere.”  
  
Yuka let her hand run over the slightly dusty handle. It had been so many years since she saw this bike. It had been the year they turned five, when their dad’s had taught them both how to ride. She had gotten the hang of it first, and it had annoyed the stubborn Tadakatsu so much, he refused to take any breaks until he had learned it too. Which couldn’t have happened more than thirty minutes later. She still remembered his happy cheers of “Yuka! Yuka, I got it too!”.  
Through the years they had spent hours racing each other up and down the neighbourhood road. Tadakatsu was a sore loser so any time Yuka was victorious, there would be rematch after rematch. Which she didn’t mind; she was in it for the fun of it all, after all. She couldn’t remember exactly when they had stopped racing each other, but at one point it changed into just using their bikes to ride to school together. Or they would go on separate bike rides; she with her group of friends, and him with his. And of course, this bright blue bike had been swapped out long ago.

“We can just pick it outside. We’re gonna take a lot of stuff to the dump later,” Tadakatsu said, bringing Yuka out of her little trip down memory lane.  
“Are you sure? It was your _first_ bike,” Yuka countered, trying to appeal to his sentimental side. It didn’t go well; Tadakatsu merely huffed.  
“When would I ever use that again?”  
Logically, it made sense. Still, Yuka couldn’t help but almost feel bad for the bike as she tossed it out the open garage door.  
“Cold,” she whispered, giving the bike a small wave. “What’s next on your list of beloved childhood memories to obliterate?”  
“Probably something in here,” Tadakatsu replied simply, reaching for a box from the top shelf and placing it on the floor next to them. “There’s a lot of crap here.”  
  
He returned to the shelf to keep bringing things down, whilst Yuka crouched down next to the box. Curiously, she opened it to have a peek inside. The first thing she saw was a photo album; Tadakatsu’s mom had different photo albums for each of her sons, all documenting the first years of their lives.  
“You’re keeping this,” she mumbled, placing it next to the box. No matter how much he was lacking in sentiment, surely not even Tadakatsu would throw away something like this. As she dug around into the box, she pulled out what appeared to be just a big chunk of wood. It looked like maybe it was a plank that had been cut in half. “ _This_ , on the other hand… Why is this not in the trash already?”  
  
Tadakatsu crouched next to her, realizing what she had found.  
“Hey, it’s from the treehouse!” he exclaimed, something reminiscing enthusiasm actually present in his voice. “Damn, we were what, seven when we built that?”  
“You mean when our dads built it while we drank Capri Sun and bossed them around? I had a very specific look in mind for this house, and I think maybe it wasn’t the most realistic,” Yuka laughed in response. She had been so jealous of Izumi, who she met in elementary school, and her pink Malibu Barbie house. Yuka herself had never been as huge of a fan of girly and pink things, maybe because her best friend up until that point had been a boy, but something about that house really spoke to her. Of course, it had been impossible for their fathers to recreate a pink, three story tree house with a slide going down the side. Instead, they had settled for a small box of uneven planks, with a floor that barely held together when the two of them would force their way into the cramped space.

Once over the initial disappointment of the construction, Yuka quickly realized their tree house had been way better than any Malibu Barbie house could ever dream of being. They had spent years up there, playing pirates and hiding away hidden treasures (usually shiny bottle caps found on the ground, but sometimes actual coins as well), pretending to be super spies and laying plans for secret missions, and eventually when they were older, had sleepovers where they did their best to freak each other out with terrifying ghost stories. Yuka always won the “scariest story of the night” award. Which wasn’t that weird, considering it was an award created by her. Where she was the judge.

The treehouse had been torn down a few years earlier, when it became clear it wasn’t much of use to them anymore now that they were teenagers. Besides, Mrs Hatagami didn’t like how it ruined “the view” in her garden anymore. It had been a sad day when Yuka looked out of her bedroom window and realized there was no trace of their little hideaway anymore.  
“Your house would have probably been sold for a lot more money if this was still up,” Yuka pointed out, chuckling. “It was a masterpiece.”  
Tadakatsu laughed shortly too. “The thing was barely holding together at the end. I think my dad didn’t even have to take any nails out.”  
  


Well, safety had never been their main concern. She had fallen out of that tree often enough anyway.  
With a smile still on her face, Yuka kept rummaging through the box. Her hand soon found something small yet relatively heavy. Curious, Yuka pulled out a tiny, dark purple bag. It wasn’t see-through, but in some kind of velvet fabric, so she had no idea what was inside.  
_Is this one of our treausres? Neat!_  
Peeking into it didn’t reveal any answers, as she only saw darkness. She had to turn the bag upside-down to get the content out.

A small pile of sand and pebbles poured onto her lap and onto the floor. She blinked, confused. More apparent trash.  
“Katsu,” she said, letting out an airy laugh. “What actually _is this_?”  
Again, Tadakatsu looked up from the other boxes he had taken down from the shelf. He looked at the sand spread all over the floor, seemingly needing a moment to really remember it himself.  
“Oh,” he finally said, clearing his throat. “Nothing.”  
But his tone betrayed him, and Yuka realized it must be _something._

“Nothing? How did a whole pile of _nothing_ end up in a nice little bag, stored in a box with a bunch of things you obviously wanted to keep for… Whatever reason?” Yuka asked teasingly, making a poor attempt at placing the sand back into the bag. Most of it was a lost cause and would probably end up in a vacuum instead.  
Tadakatsu pretended to be busy sorting flipping through an old collection of a mix of Baseball cards and Pokemon cards, so Yuka had to lightly kick him for his attention.  
“Hey! I’m gonna need an answer!” she playfully demanded.

“Yeah, okay,” Tadakatsu sighed, like explaining the mystery sand was some sort of chore his mom was forcing upon him. “Remember when we all went on that first trip to Aji-Cho? It’s just from there. We collected a shit ton in buckets and I dunno, I guess I kept some of it.”  
She did remember that. Their families had gone on a couple of outings together through the years, and the annual beach trip during the summers was something she was always looking forward too. It was something that, with so many of the other things, had diminished through the years as the summers would be packed with plans with their separate friend groups anyway.

“Did you know that was in here?” Yuka asked, after successfully getting at least half of the sand back.  
“Obviously not,” Tadakatsu replied with a shrug. “It’s been years since I put it away.”  
“So we can just throw it?” Yuka held up the bag, dangling it in front of him. “Or what?”  
Tadakatsu seemed to consider it for a second, before snatching the bag away from her.  
“Or what,” he mumbled. She noticed him discreetly place it beneath the photo album she had put aside before, and couldn’t help but smile.  
_You might be softer than I give you credit for, Katsu._

It took them almost a couple of hours, but they finally finished going through all his things. They had come across several other things which Yuka had never thought she would see again; old treasure maps, some of the secret mission details, several bottle caps, and even a small dictionary of a secret language they had started to develop. The more they found, the more Yuka realized why she was really there; whilst she had thought Tadakatsu had really just wanted some help throwing useless stuff away, it became clear what he really wanted was for her to re-live their childhood memories one last time. It was such an unexpected sweet gesture, she wasn’t sure how to handle it. So she said nothing. It was how she preferred it between them, after all. She would always deflect using jokes, and Tadakatsu would not really do or say much about anything emotional. But they both knew.

The sun was beginning to go down when they sat on the porch, drinking some lemonade and unwinding from the day’s work. Yuka thought it was exactly what they deserved. She was onto her second glass when Tadakatsu apparently seemed it was time to start talking about _real stuff_.  
“Moving doesn’t mean we won’t still be friends, you know,” he said, clearing his throat. It seemed almost physically painful for him to say these words out loud.  
“Yeah, duuh. You don’t have to say that,” Yuka dismissed quickly, nodding her head. Although of course, that had been something she had been worried about. Their friendship for the last couple of years had been based mostly around the fact that they lived right next door to each other, and that it had just always been like this.  
“I mean it though, Yuka,” Tadakatsu continued, his tone slightly more insistent. “Like yeah, maybe I won’t go to Shiroiwa High, but we can still meet up for stuff. Like the beach. Or get your dad to invite us for some of those classic BBQs.”  
“I will,” she promised, her lips forming a more strained smile than usual. “Although it kinda hurts you’re just using me for my dad’s famous burgers.”  
  
Again they shared a moment of silence, and Yuka took in the sight of the Hatagami garden for what would be one of the last times. Well, the garden would obviously still be there, but it wouldn’t be the _Hatagami garden_ anymore. She wouldn’t be able to just hop the fence over there whenever she wanted. Unless maybe the old couple took a liking to her and started giving her cookies or something. Which would be pretty awesome.  
“Hey, do you… Want some of this?” Tadakatsu asked, breaking the silence. He was holding up the bag of sand from before. “You know, for memories sake.”  
They looked at each other for a moment, his expression so sincere, as if what he was offering her was some grand jewelleries or something and not just a bag of dust, that Yuka eventually couldn’t help but burst into laughter. Tadakatsu soon joined her, lowering the bag.  
“No, no, you keep that,” she said, placing a friendly arm around his shoulder. “I’m not about to forget, anyway.”

  
And whilst Yuka could not guarantee that they would be friends forever or that the move wouldn’t cause them to eventually drift apart, she knew what she said wasn’t a lie. She wouldn’t forget any of it.

  
  



End file.
